Former New Zealand captain Ali Riley will retire from football at the end of the US National Women’s Soccer League season following a prolonged battle with a chronic nerve injury.<\/p>\n
The 37-year-old Angel City defender has barely played at any level since being withdrawn from selection on the eve of New Zealand’s opening match against Canada at last year’s Paris Olympics.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles-born Riley said on social media she would be proud to bow out in her hometown.<\/p>\n
“While I certainly experienced my share of heartbreak in my career, it will never compare to the immense love, joy, and gratitude I feel when I look back on over three decades of playing this game,” she wrote in a post.<\/p>\n
With 163 New Zealand appearances dating back to her 2007 debut, Riley is the nation’s second-most capped international behind only former Football Ferns teammate Ria Percival (166), who retired last year.<\/p>\n
A veteran of five Women’s World Cups, Riley led New Zealand to their first win at the global tournament in 2023 when the Ferns beat Norway 1-0 at Auckland’s Eden Park.<\/p>\n
-Reuters<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Former New Zealand captain Ali Riley will retire from football at the end of the US National Women’s Soccer League season following a prolonged battle with a chronic nerve injury. The 37-year-old Angel City defender has barely played at any level since being withdrawn from selection on the eve of New Zealand’s opening match against […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":15173,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15172"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15174,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15172\/revisions\/15174"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}